To Turn Back Time
by SleepyInChicago
Summary: Hermione told me there's some serious consequences with going back in time - potentially seriously dangerous consequences. But I'm willing to risk 'seriously dangerous consequences' to reunite George with his twin. What's the worst that could happen?
1. Chapter 1

**Before we begin, allow me to explain some changes/new things. First, I'll attempt to tell this through the perspective of my OC, Camila Mullaly (clearly in 1st person). I'm not good at writing in 1st person, so, sorry.  
Second: Now, in regards to how a Time Turner works. I know that, when turned, it takes you back in time, but only to watch the events that have previously happened, and make minor changes, correct? You had to be wary not to be seen by your past self. I'm going to scrap that idea (sorry Jo!) and just go with how we all know time traveling to be. Y'know, going back in time as if the present you came from never happened.  
Now that that's outta the way:**

**I'm not sorry. I have a million and a half stories that I haven't written in about forever, I know, I'm working on those, but this idea would _not_ leave my mind no matter how hard I pushed it aside. Allow me to begin with a short intro to leave open plenty of plot opportunities.**  
**Geez, this didn't look this short on paper. :/**

**I own nothing/no one that you recognize, so you all know. If you want to sue me, Jo, you'll probably get five bucks and a couple of markers.**

**Be sure to leave your thoughts! :)**

**/long-ass A/N**

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**2 February 1999**

There's a Muggle saying that goes 'everybody has 20/20 hindsight'. Everybody has a perfect understanding of a past event, can clearly see choices they could've, or should've made. It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, watching George struggle to get back on his feet and past Fred's death, all while reopening the business he swore he'd never go near again. The shop was the most difficult hurdle for George to get over; it was always Fred _and_ George's thing. That's the only way Fred was alive; through the products that sat on the shelves, through the inordinate amount of melted cauldrons and uncontrollable fires during the inventing process; he was woven into every spell, every idea, every thought that ever passed through Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and into everything George did. We knew, we all knew, that nobody would deal with it harder than George, but had we foreseen just _how_ hard George would take it, and how he'd react, I don't think we would have prodded him so hard to talk about it.

Sometimes (most times, honestly), I look back and wonder: if I stayed back with Fred instead of leaving just to stop his pestering me about it, would he still be alive? Or would we both have died? If I hadn't intersected that Sectumsempra curse, would _that_ have killed him? That's likely the most painful thing about war, though: too many ifs, and there's far too much unclear.

I do know one thing: Fred Weasley saved my life that night, and when he needed the favor returned, I wasn't there for him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Some background on Camila because I'm terrible at doing that subtly throughout a story.  
God these seemed so much longer written on paper. Maybe because my hand-writing is huge?**

**I'd like to thank EveryNewDay because my first reviewer is always my favorite. :) #shameless shoutout**

**Be sure to leave your thoughts! :D**

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My childhood...well, my childhood was tainted with my father's obsession with blood status and how he utterly despised anything of or relating to Muggles. My father was a pure-blood, a Slytherin, and as it seems with most pure-blooded Slytherins, he was rich, borderline narcissistic, and like I mentioned before, obsessed with blood status, something I believe he picked up from Lucius Malfoy, who was a friend of his in school. Of course, that blood-status obsession led my dad to believe that pure-bloods should only marry pure-bloods, a belief made complicated by the fact he fell in love with a Muggle-born witch. That's right; the obsessed-with-blood-status man that is my father married a woman of Muggle parentage. How's that for hypocrisy?

But my dad, being the man he is, refused to be seen as a blood-traitor, and thus he showed his new wife off to everyone as a pure-blood as well, forcing my mum to cut off all ties to her Muggle relatives. He continued to follow along with Malfoy's logic of what was 'pure' in relation to blood, and not too long after, my mum completely bought into that lifestyle. So we can safely assume I've never respected either of my parents.

I'm a half-blood, and was to reveal the truth of my mother's birth to _no one. _Once this truth was revealed to us, he spoke openly of the family he and Lucius deemed to be ever the bunch of blood traitors: the Weasleys. To admit my birthright and the fact I was close with members of the Weasley family - both of which happened, and both of which happened entirely by accident - would have been considered the biggest betrayal our family could endure. So I stayed as far away from my own family as I could during holidays - I'm the seventh of nine children, with ten nieces and nephews; I wasn't missed. When the twins and I escaped from Hogwarts in the middle of our seventh year, and after I was certain their business was going to thrive, I told my parents about everything that happened through the sixth years I never saw them.

They weren't pleased.


	3. Chapter 3

**Siriusly (hahaha get it it's a pun) though, what better day to post this kind of stuff than the 14th anniversary of Freddie's death?  
I didn't realize how much b/s I went through before we actually got legit story.  
As soon as that's typed up, that'll be posted. Serious crossing of fingers for today.**

**Anyway, be sure to leave your thoughts. I'm sure it's what Fred would've wanted. :')**

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From the moment my wand 'chose me' (as Mr. Ollivander had said), I was immensely attached to it. Oak with dragon heartstring, twelve and three quarter inches, slightly springy; I had committed the entirety of its composition to my mind within days. It had turned into my child the day I wrapped my fingers around the wooden handle, feeling a magical pull as I managed to _not_ destroy Ollivander's shop with the chosen wand. Of course, my older sisters found it utterly hilarious, me treating the stick of wood like a living, breathing creature, but that's what it was to me: very much alive. That's what the very thought of the wizarding world was to me when I was young, though; alive, breathing, with the sights and sounds of all things magical. I've always been able to do this, like some subconscious switch that allows me to see abstract ideas with a concrete form, give life to the inanimate or just non-existent. It's this ability, I'm sure, that prevented me from going absolutely mental after Fred died; his presence was always in the Burrow, I know it was, and I managed to give that presence a life inside my head. Thus, I often had Fred's voice up there, ever the annoying git most of the time, and felt it only through him that I managed to get George going at at least a minimum human level.

I still don't know if that voice was actually Fred's, speaking to me in some ghost form, or if it was just my own voice, revealing the things that I was too scared to acknowledge as the true.


	4. Chapter 4

**Yikes. Angst Central, Population - George Weasley  
****There's a lot of ideas here all meshed together and I don't think it came out well? I read through it a few times and changed up where I thought it was awkward, but um. **

**But if you squint, really, really hard, you may see that I slipped some angst in there. It's okay, easy to miss.  
Felt I really had to get this out on 2 May of all days, and here it is.****  
**

**I really want to hear your thoughts about this particular chapter, so please, I'd love if you reviewed. :)**

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In the span of time between Fred's death and his funeral, life at the Burrow came to an eerie standstill. It was all in our own minds, of course, as the tangible world around us bustled on in a fury of funerals, celebrations, cleaning up and the like, and it all moved forward far too fast for us to keep up. It was too much for Mrs. Weasley to handle, especially; on top of the stress from losing her son, she spent most evenings in tears as Ginny sat with her, gently whispering 'it'll be all right', even though she and Mrs. Weasley and the rest of us knew that everything was going to be _far _from all right. From my watching the family over the few weeks, it was clear, and understandably obvious, that George felt the worse of the effects and the tangible world joined our mental world in a painful halt the day of Fred's funeral. With the Weasley family huddled under tents to shield themselves from mother nature, talking grievously amoungst themselves, George just stared blankly at Fred's coffin, standing alone in heavy rain. George retreated into himself that evening as he remained the only one to watch as the polished wood box that contained his twin was lowered into the earth. As we pulled him away (forcibly, I may add) from the headstone, he muttered, "I'm sorry" in the quietest of voices; that was the last thing he said for seven months. He then proceeded to live as half of George Weasley, most days not bothering to get out of bed, and on those he did, he performed meaningless tasks in an attempt push himself past his level of physical endurance. He boarded up the shop he and Fred created - rather, Bill and Percy boarded it up while George stared, unseeing at the darkened building. Mrs. Weasley had all of us sit down to write a letter to Fred not long after his funeral, to help us feel better. Everyone agreed, of course, except for George, who stared at the parchment with a high disdain, never once making an attempt to pick up the quill. Staring blankly at everything around him had become a common habit in a very short amount of time. He never met anybody's gaze, never answered anybody's concerned questions; he just wanted to sleep.

Some days, he didn't try to hide his pain; I remember one afternoon, George managed to drag himself out of bed at maybe four o'clock - I think this was around the four month mark, where it seemed as if he glued his lips together to prevent the temptation of speaking; where he'd gotten so thin that if he lost any more weight, he'd probably disappear; where he'd register everything with his hollow brown eyes, though we knew he wasn't really seeing anything. Mrs. Weasley offered him something to eat, which he not-so-politely responded to by pretending he never heard her. Walking past her, he must have caught sight of himself in the mirror their mum had hung by the kitchen, because he suddenly stopped, and stared full on at his reflection. Mrs. Weasley and I watched him curiously as he stared at the mirror for the longest time; we both knew that he didn't see himself, but instead Fred, his twin, his best friend. I tried to imagine what George might be seeing: Fred, shaking his head with that smirk of his, looking over his brother. _Bugger, mate,_ I could hear him say, _you look like hell_. _And that long hair is _not_ a good look on you, Georgie. _

Just as we thought that maybe George would be okay, that maybe this was what he needed, his hand closed into a fist, and he punched the mirror. Hard. He looked completely unaware of Mrs. Weasley fussing over his bleeding right hand, and let her remove the shards of mirror still embedded into his skin before he pulled his hand away and went back upstairs.

George was just bloody pitiful and in a desperate need of some help; luckily, it was about that time when my mind developed the Fred-voice. I remember the first thing it said to me: _Oi, would you get my pathetic sod of a brother a sandwich? He looks like an Inferi. _Now it just seems strange, possibly plain mental, that I blindly followed a voice I heard inside my head; then, I was listening to Fred, and I missed him so much that I often felt the constant urge to blow something up just to cause mayhem. Fred would've appreciated it. Thanks to Fred's advice, and the realization that George would destroy himself if something didn't change, I began to force-feed the pathetic sod. For the first few days, I literally shoved food down his throat; I've never seen someone so opposed to eating Mrs. Weasley's soup. He eventually began to eat on his own, however sparingly. It was a start.

One night, I talked at George for a while as he ate, and he stared, begging silently for me to shut up. I obliged after a bit, camping out on the bed Fred once occupied and wound up falling asleep. George woke me up by none-to-gently pulling me off the bed, regarding me with those pitiful eyes in a way that said 'that's _his_ bed'.

Fred's death hurt us, but George's reaction hurt us so much more. Watching him barely live, being a shadow of the George he was before the Battle...I knew he was hurting, and hurting bad, but that didn't make watching it any easier. It seemed he lacked the motivation to do anything other than eat and shower occasionally - he couldn't cope, and though it was always apparent, when we neared the one year mark, we couldn't pretend to deny it any longer.

I thought a lot about going back in time by the fourth month and nicked Hermione's Time-Turner by the fifth - I never really considered using it until George lost his will to live.

Ginny was the first to notice his absence - he had started joining us for dinner on a regular basis. Given his mental state the previous year, though, we didn't find it too unusual, but Ginny was the baby sister, and she knew something was wrong. She begged me endlessly to check on him, and I finally gave in: she was nearly as much a pest as Fred.

We walked in on the incident that changed absolutely everything: something I had never wanted to see, and something I wish I hadn't.

George sat on the edge of Fred's bed, holding one of Mrs. Weasley's larger kitchen knives over his left wrist, the right already disturbingly red due to the three deep gashes he'd already marked himself with. It was one of those situations I prayed wasn't a reality, just one of those awful nightmares a person wakes up from in a heavy sweat - but when we saw him actually pierce his skin with the blade, I knew I was out of my mind to think this was anything but painfully real. Ginny seemed to find reality about the time I did, as she found her voice, running down the stairs and shouting as loud as she could for her mum. It didn't even startle George, who just continued what he had previously been doing until he was losing a sufficient amount of blood, and finally looked to me - what in the bloody hell was I supposed to say? I couldn't say it's okay - that'd be downright insulting - because, here he was, trying to off himself, clearly it _wasn't_ okay. We held solid eye contact until the rest of the Weasley clan, led by an absolutely frantic Mrs. Weasley, huddled into the small room to see just what Ginny had been going on about.

I had never seen a mother in so much pain before, not in the way Mrs. Weasley was when she held on to the son that was rapidly passing in and out of consciousness. I held on to the Time-Turner I had hidden under my shirt, the very one I would not hesitate to use if George was successful in ending his life.

"I'm sorry, mum," George said finally, in a voice painfully emotionless and rough around the edges. "I just wanted to be with him again."


	5. Chapter 5

**Hooray for character interactions!  
****I'm really bad at creating fighting between characters ugh. :(**

**I'd really like to hear what you're thinking whilst reading, people! :) (I know I'm being annoying but. :))**

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A room in North Devon District Hospital and a nurse watching him every minute of every day was George earned for his attempt on his life. North Devon is a Muggle hospital, as St. Mungo's wouldn't handle George's case (nothing magical about a kitchen knife to the wrists, really), and we all tried our best not to look completely out of place. Mr. Weasley was beside himself, surrounded by everything Muggle, particularly intrigued by the strange 'pen' the doctor used to write with.

"Ink on the inside, you say?" his excited voice filtered into George's room, where the rest of us were gathered. "Fascinating!"

But Mr. Weasley wasn't the only fascinated one: Ginny and Mrs. Weasley were discussing the machine George was attached to while Ron pressed some buttons and George looked like he seriously wanted to be anywhere else. After we brought him, half-conscious, and explained to a nurse what had happened, he was placed under what they called a '72-hour suicide watch', where someone had to be in his room at all times to ensure he wouldn't attempt to off himself again. He used his time after regaining consciousness to argue mercilessly with the poor nurse about being confined to a room for three days, insisting that he wasn't a danger to himself, _really_, he wasn't, and the nurse, flustered, kept repeating, it's hospital policy, sir, I'm sorry. And an irritable, depressed wizard doesn't make for a good companion.

"Ron, you insufferable git, I swear if you don't stop pressing buttons on that bloody thing I'm going to hex you into next week."

"George!" Mrs. Weasley berated, interrupting Ginny's comment about the strange green lights on the machine.

"Mum, the thing is attached to me. I don't know what he's done, but I now have this odd sensation in my hand," he said, rather innocently, as he flexed the fingers of his right hand, which had a tube stuck into it.

"Okay, everybody, out. Let's leave George to get some rest. I'll go call for the nurse."

"I hate that nurse."

"She's a nice lady," I said.

"She's a prat."

That moment, with George's voice rough with anger so unlike him, I became fed up with what he had become. Everyone (myself included) had been walking on eggshells around him, so afraid to say or do something that would send him deeper into himself; now he was just being a git.

"I've had about enough of you," I said, once the rest of his family had left.

He looked at me curiously, scratching lazily at the heavy bandage around his left wrist. "Come again?"

"This! All of this." I gestured widely with my arms.

"You have no idea, Cami. No idea," he said, realizing what I was talking about.

"I don't? _I don't_? Fred was just as much my twin as he was yours, don't act like I don't know what you're going through."

George just scoffed, like I hadn't spent the last ten years in their company, as if I didn't know them better than I knew myself. "Yeah. You can't know how it feels -"

"-how it feels to have part of you ripped away? How it feels to not want to live because he didn't get that privilege? I know what it feels like. He took a part of me with him that night too. But there's a difference, George."

"What's that?" he asked, more to just humor me than from any actual curiosity.

"I didn't let it destroy me."

He didn't like that; he pushed himself straight up, turning to face me fully. "I had a perfectly reasonable reaction!"

"Really? Acting like your life is over is 'perfectly reasonable' to you?"

"It's better than pretending like Fred never existed!"

"Feeling so utterly sorry for yourself may work for you, but it doesn't cut it for me. I'm not pretending he never existed, I'm getting on with my life, which is Fred would've wanted us to do."

"And who the hell are you to say what he would've wanted?"

"You really think that Fred Weasley, of all people, would've wanted you to close the shop, and sit around doing absolutely nothing?"

All the fight left him then, and he fell back into his pillows, looking exhausted. "I have no bloody idea."

"Well I do. And I know that'd he would've wanted you to turn Ron's pillow into a spider in his memory," I actually got the faintest of smiles from George. "Why would he want to see you suffer so badly?"

"He did always have a bit of a mean streak."

"But not that mean."

"No, I suppose not."

I sat on the edge of his bed, patting his arm. "When they let you out of here, we're going to Diagon Alley, you're going to open Weasley's Wizard Wheezes back up, and for Merlin's sake, you're going to be happy if it kills you."

"And what if I can't be happy?"

I reached behind me and unhooked the Time-Turner, dangling it in front of George. "Then we go back, and we do all again." He stared at the hourglass embedded into the silver metal like it was his salvation. "But I want you to try, really try. Can you do that for me, Georgie?"

Finally, he looked me in the eyes, and gave a genuine smile for the first time in a long time. "Of course I can Cami."

I leaned forward to gently kiss his forehead. "Thank you."


	6. Chapter 6

**Dementors because why not? I don't have a real reason for them being there, just as a plot device to show that George can't cast his Patronus anymore, possibly one of the saddest canons ever. We'll be going back in time in the next few chapters (as they're already written out).**

**If you're reading, why not start reviewing? Any thoughts, good or bad, will be appreciated. :D**

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Diagon Alley was once again the pulse of the wizarding world that I once knew it to be; with Voldemort gone, the world was relaxed and the Alley again bustled with the bright colours and eccentric wizards that I remembered. I had taken the time to admire some of the shops (I made a mental note to stop into Flourish and Blotts after we reopened the shop; I wanted to look for a new Potions book), letting George head to the shop ahead of me. When I reached him, he was just standing there, holding his wand.

"George?"

"I can't do this. I can run this place without him."

"Yes you can. He's rooting for you. We all are."

"I'm not cut out for this."

"You didn't think that two years ago."

"Two years ago I had my twin."

I pulled out my own wand, flicking it upward, causing the boards over the windows to disappear, as if they'd never been there. "Do you know how many excited owls I received when I put the ad in the Prophet that the store was opening again? Come on, Georgie, everyone loves this place."

I headed forward, unlocking the door with a simple _Alohomora_ spell (leave it to the twins to have the lowest level of protection ), and noticed George hadn't followed me. I pulled him by the arm and turning on the lights, the entire shop was just how we had left it before we went underground, albeit a lot more dirty.

I watched George as he walked through the isles, running his fingers over a few of the dusty products, before he finally looked at me with a smile. "Let's do this."

"That's the spirit! Let's give this place a good clean before I suffocate."

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For the first maybe two months, the shop ran at almost comical levels, in the best way; it was doing just as well as ever, probably better. That also encompassed George himself, as it was kind of hard to be unhappy in a joke shop. It did look as if he were trying hard to start moving past his brother's death; I was proud of him.

Around Christmas, we hit our peak, being very nearly overwhelmed by sheer number of people, and it helped that George was running a sale on some of the better selling products.

"I can't tell if this was a really bad idea or a really good one," George shouted from the register, where he'd been stationed for the better part of two hours, dealing with young wizards who didn't know there were twenty-nine Knuts in a Sickle, and good-naturedly letting his own pranks be used against him.

"You came up with this!"

"Regretting that now."

Ginny, who we'd temporarily employed for the Christmas holiday, leaned over the railing from the second floor, her hand on a young wizard's shoulder. "George!" he acknowledged her call with a wave of his hand. "Where are the Muggle card tricks?"

George looked as if he'd never been asked that before. "They're far back up there. Try looking by the staircase."

As Ginny led the wizard away, George leaned back from the register, finally getting a break - he looked worn out and badly in need of a holiday, but I haven't seen him so happy in a while. "Fred moved a lot before we had to go into hiding. I don't know where anything is anymore."

"He was never satisfied with the organization of this place. Always said it was too small for all your products," I said, flicking my wand over a bare shelf, instantly restocking it.

"That's right. I never much cared either way. Eight Galleons," he said to a witch when she placed a large, orange Skiving Snackbox in front of him.

"No, you were always more concerned with how well the business was doing."

"I'm the analytical twin," he said, half-joking, then wished the witch a Merry Christmas.

It wasn't his best, but he made the effort, so I chuckled politely.

"Here, give me a break from this. I'll restock."

"And the thrilling jobs at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes continue."

He poked me in the side as we passed each other, shocking me with a buzzer he had hidden in his hand.

"Clever, George. Very clever."

He gave me a wink and pulled out his wand to begin restocking where I left off.

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By the time we closed up, the shop brought in enough money to pay rent for the next year or more, and George couldn't stop cracking the ridiculous jokes he loved, much to Ginny and I's dismay (trust me, 'I'm holey' stops being funny after the first time it's told).

"It's cold out here," George said, taking a break from the jokes and tightening his jacket around him.

"It's December Georgie."

"A different cold. Like a dark, depressing cold."

Sure enough, as soon as George mentioned it, I felt exactly what he was talking about: a cold so unlike winter cold, a cold that covered everything in our immediate area in a frost. A cold that chilled from inside out and seemed to suck the happiness out of the area, leaving only the darkest of feelings.

"Dementors."

"A bit like that, yeah."

"No, look!"

Three of the dark, hooded figures that guarded Azkaban were gliding down the Alley toward us, their breath coming out like they were rattling chains, trying to suck the all of the positive emotions and happy memories from us. I quickly patted my leg, where I normally kept my wand in my boot, only to find it wasn't there.

Fabulous.

"You have to take this one, I don't have my wand. Quickly!"

But George was a few steps ahead of me, already aiming his wand at the Dementors that were closer to us than I cared for them to be.

"Expecto Patronum!"

While I fully expected to see the silvery fox that was George's Patronus, all that came from his wand was a small wisp of that silvery air, nothing more. He looked as surprised as I felt.

"George!"

He tried the spell again, with no better results; I was seconds away from grabbing his wand and casting the spell myself when a horse of the same silvery mist galloped down the Alley, driving the Dementors away from us. Ginny stood in the doorway of the shop, directing her Patronus, looking every bit as frightened as the two of us.

"What are Dementors doing in Diagon Alley?" she asked exasperated, handing me my wand.

"Haven't the foggiest. But I don't fancy another encounter with them. Come on." I held my arms out to each Weasley, and making sure they were holding on securely before I Apparated to the specific point at the Burrow. With an almost impossibly perfect sense of timing, a frantic Mrs. Weasley came rushing out to greet her children the moment we appeared.

"You're late!" she shouted, pulling Ginny in tightly for a hug.

"Mum, you're crushing me," Ginny said with forced breaths.

"We ran into some Dementors."

"Dementors? What on earth were they doing there?"

"We were wondering the same thing. Azkaban escapee on the loose?" Ginny joked. Mrs. Weasley wasn't amused.

With no clear sign of amusement, George said, "I thought it was funny."

"What's the matter, dear?"

"Dementors, mum. They're not exactly the most pleasant of creatures."

I knew what was truly bothering him, though; his inability to cast his Patronus when he really needed to. George sat in an almost a mystified state during dinner, hardly touching the food. Of course, Mrs. Weasley was concerned, and when she told him to eat something, he snapped back to attention, more distracted than depressed. Ron and Harry tried to explain why the Dementors had left their post from the prison (they were both Aurors, they knew these kind of things), but neither had a very good reason, which didn't settle Ginny. She kept her wand near her plate at all times, and dove for it at every sound.


	7. Chapter 7

**I went all flashback on you guys! I thought the idea was cute. And clearly I don't know how fireworks work?  
And now, we've traveled back in time~ :)**

**Hit the review buttons, guyz, you know you wanna! :D**

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"Go on, you try."

I closed my eyes, filtering through all my memories for a sufficiently happy one; I found it after a bit of digging. It may not be my happiest, but it'll certainly work in the current circumstances.

"Expecto Patronum."

The memory worked: my Patronus, a falcon, spread its wings from my wand, making a lap around the room before slowly fading away, sending the room back into darkness.

As I waited for George to find his happy memory, I listened in on the conversations I could hear throughout the house: in the rooms below us, I could hear Ginny going on about wedding plans with Hermione Granger - it was strange, to think of Ginny getting married, even to Harry Potter - and above us, Mrs. Weasley spoke to her husband on the very same topic.

"Okay, I think I've got it," George said, pulling me back to what we were doing.

"All right, go on then."

He recited the spell, flourishing his wand with determination, but found no better results than he had in Diagon Alley.

"I don't understand why this isn't working."

"Maybe you aren't concentrating. Or maybe it's the memory."

"Well, what memory did you use?"

"My first Christmas here."

George smirked to the ground at the mention; he had rather fond memories of that holiday as well. How couldn't he? The twins gave me my best Christmas that year.

"Let me try again."

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_The winter of our fourth year, I spent my first Christmas holiday at the Burrow; I had grown tired of Malfoy's constant spew of blood-status while my hypocrite father agreed with his every word. Plus, I realised that any time spent with the twins was far better than could be spent at home. I owled my family shortly before holiday, saying I was staying at Hogwarts to finish up some extra classwork. It was a half-arsed excuse, sure, but it got me out of Christmas at Malfoy Manor. My presence would hardly be missed._

_The twins had fully prepped Mrs. Weasley for my arrival, though I'd already been at the Burrow countless times in four years, and their mum knew me better than my own._

_ "Mum will probably go mental because of your hair. You've been warned," Fred told me as we made our way off the train._

_ "You're overreacting, Freddie," George said, scoffing._

_ "Have you met mum recently, Georgie?"_

_Sure enough, the second Mrs. Weasley spotted the three of us, she rushed up to me, playing with my hair._

_ "What did you two do this this poor girl's hair?"_

_While Fred said, 'I told you' to his twin, George said, 'it's quite a good look, no?' to his mother._

_ "It becomes her, doesn't it?"_

_ "She could be a Weasley!"_

_During a run of experimental pranks, a Colour-Change Charm gone wrong turned my originally jet black hair into the same fiery-red of the Weasley's, and Mrs. Weasley stared at the colour hesitantly._

_ "I do hope you can change this back. You looked beautiful with your original hair," she said to me. I looked down, trying not to look overly embarrassed._

_ "Of course," the twins said in unison, but with matching smirks that said they had no intentions of changing anything._

_ "Now, where's Ron and Harry?"_

_ "Oh, didn't we tell you?" George asked, feigning shock and doing a rather good job of it._

_ "So sorry mother. Ron was being a right git, so we decided to lock the lot of them in their compartment. They'll circle around on the Express for a while, I'm sure somebody will find them eventually."_

_ "George!"_

_ "I'm Fred."_

_Mrs. Weasley wasn't amused in the slightest._

* * *

_For the first time, I spent a holiday without one person slandering every half-blood and Muggle-born family to have ever come into existence, without painfully hypocritical _everything, _and experienced a family that actually cared for one another, even if Fred did charm a series of spiders to chase Ron up the stairs. I saw a family gathered around a large Christmas tree, opening gifts, talking about absolutely nothing, just being an actual family. A family that, contrary to my hair colour, I wasn't a part of, yet one that went out of their way to make me feel as if I were; Mrs. Weasley even knitted me my own Weasley sweater, in a deep blue, matching the color of my Ravenclaw house. For all intents and purposes, I was the eighth Weasley kid that night._

_But, of course, Fred Weasley being Fred Weasley, he couldn't have a quiet, boring holiday, oh no. That was against his very nature in every way. He had to do something to spice it up, to create mayhem, just a little of it. He dropped one of their very temperamental and experimental fireworks from the second floor, and when it hit the ground, it set everything within a mile of where it landed in a magical fire. It didn't ruin anything - the most it did was create the mayhem Fred needed and cause quite a panic amongst the family - but Mrs. Weasley was absolutely furious, driving the younger twin into his room with a loud string of clearly empty threats, with George and I laughing like maniacs while we set off another of the fireworks by their broom shed._

_I'd never gotten such a scolding in my life, their mother saying 'I am at the very end of my rope with those two! And now they've dragged poor Camila into this!' as she spoke with rest of her family after locking us in the twins' room._

_Fred and George were curled together on one bed, laughing like they've never seen or heard anything funnier in their life, and I watched them, thinking how it was the best Christmas in the history of Christmas._

* * *

I hadn't remembered falling asleep, but George shouting his brother's name at an unnecessarily high octave woke me, and I looked around, fully expecting to see Fred's ghost hovering around the room.

"What is going on?"

"I know why I can't cast a Patronus," George said solemnly.

"Why's that?"

"Every happy memory I used to cast a Patronus before was a memory with Fred. Now every time I look to one of those, I can't see past him lying lifeless on that stretcher in the Great Hall. Even your memory..." he trailed off, inspecting his wand. I knew what he was talking about. The reason that memory was happy was solely because of the twins: Fred and George trying their damnedest to actually lock Ron in his compartment on the Hogwarts Express; George holding a twelve-year-old Ginny on his shoulders as we walked through King's Cross, Fred ahead of them, dramatically announcing their arrival to every Muggle in sight; the way Fred had clung to his brother's shirt as they went mental laughing. I knew what it meant to George, I knew that they were all moments he'd never get back and never get again. And I knew it dug him deeper into himself with every passing moment.

It was clear; George was never going to get over Fred's death, not really.

After I sent him off to bed, and waited a decent amount of time, I crept over to where he slept restlessly on the couch, stretching the chain of the Time-Turner so that it was around George's neck as well.

He had made true to his promise, he had tried, but it'd take far more time than George had to begin feeling better about himself. I wasn't going to wait around for him to make another attempt on his life.

I spun the hourglass once, hearing Hermione's voice inside my head, telling me that altering a time-line could have disastrous, even dangerous effects. Could alter the future in a way that would put all of us in danger. How I could just be delaying the inevitable, temporizing until the events that previously occurred came to pass once more, with a more pivotal impact. Turning the hourglass for a third time, the world spun in a backwards cycle around me, erasing everything that had happened in the last year from history. It was too late to change my mind now.

What was danger if it made George whole again? What is a little disaster to the masters of disaster themselves?


	8. Chapter 8

**I really couldn't think of a better introduction to going back in time. But we're there, and Fred is alive, and George is a happy Weasley once more!  
Don't get too comfy in the happiness, Georgie, I promise it won't last very long. ^^'  
Oops foreshadowing in my A/N~~**

**Leave your thoughts! I'm getting seriously amped while writing these! :)**

* * *

The world settled down again after a few minutes of nauseating rewinding; funny, really, how long it takes to erase a full year. Everything looked the same, and for the most part, it felt the same - I did feel like I hadn't gone through a war, though, like I hadn't seen families torn apart by Voldemort, even though the memories of the Battle were as vivid as ever.

The night had shifted into day, and I left George on the couch to inspect the rest of the house; Mrs. Weasley had porridge going on the stove, stirring itself as she read a cookbook, and Mr. Weasley read the Daily Prophet, with a Muggle newspaper open on the table in front of him. Ginny sat beside him, falling asleep on her hand as he talked about Muggle politics, occasionally opening her eyes to politely appear interested. The person I was most concerned with seeing sat across from his younger brother, playing a rather dull game of Wizard's chess, and I was never so happy to see Fred's disinterest in the world around him early in the morning. Initial confusion washed away when I got a good look at Fred's shirt - he wore the same god-awful yellowish paisley...disaster the day Mad-Eye brought the remaining members of the Order to discuss his plans to transport Harry to the Burrow without Death Eater interference. It's amazing, really, the things I manage to remember. I thought I heard Fred saying 'I'm so bored I'm considering turning this board into a textbook' when a voice behind me said,

"What the bloody hell is this?"

I turned around to see George, strangely different than I had left him, pointing to the left side of his head, where he had an ear that he shouldn't.

"It's an ear, George."

"Funny. Did you forget that I lost this one in..."

"...in an event that hasn't yet happened?"

He lowered his hand, regarding me with raised eyebrows. "It happened over a year ago. Are you feeling okay?"

I brought George to the bannister where I stood, and he scanned over his family before his eyes locked on his twin; his expression went from confusion to shock to complete and utter euphoria in a matter of seconds.

"Freddie!"

With the unexpected and frankly unnecessary exclamation of his name, Fred started and nearly fell out of his chair; once he regained his composure, he stared back at his copy with a smile a mixture of enthusiasm equal to George' and slight surprise. After all, to Fred, it had only be a few hours since he'd last seen his twin.

"Now why don't the rest of you greet me like that?"

Without wasting another precious second, George flew down the stairs and latched himself onto Fred, who now looked completely confused, hesitantly patting his brother's back. The rest of the Weasleys stared curiously at the two, wondering why George held to Fred like he'd disappear where he sat.

"Are you all right, George?" Mrs. Weasley asked.

"Mum, I've never felt better."


End file.
